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Mariano

T he last time we were in Sub Rosa, the underground club in Paris where Olivier Nemours forced my mamma to dance against her will, we were looking for a man my brother was going to kill for assaulting Chloe, a girl we knew from the small town in Louisiana where mamma and papà had roots and a house.

Matteo ended up finding the love of his life dancing on the stage of the underground club, or tomb, as the underground scene was nothing but catacombs.

Stella was the newer version of Scarlett that the Nemours had caged and forced to dance.

That night—was it in November or early December?—led us back to Sub Rosa.

We were on the hunt for the Nemours and the Russians they were working with.

We’d learned from the wannabe pirate, one Bertrand Moro, that the Nemours wanted to keep Stella for her monetary worth, while the Russians wanted to get rid of her because of the trouble my family was causing to get her home.

By all accounts, neither family was good to her.

The Nemours had taken Stella in when she was just a kid and put her straight to work.

They dressed her up as a star, sold her to crowds of highest bidders as an otherworldly being, and forced her to dance for her life in the circus that had become her life.

Saverio had reason to believe the Nemours and the Russians were hiding Stella in the catacombs.

We were on a recon mission to find her. We’d separated into groups—leaders and soldiers—to search the vast bowels of the Paris underground.

I couldn’t fathom where they would hide her, unless they carved out a spot for her.

It was colder than a witch’s tit, and the sewer-sized rats were running the fucking show. Some of them darted out of fear, but most of them made eye contact, as if to say, come and get me, you fuckin’ punk .

Zio Romeo and I were leading two sets of soldiers.

We were making our way in deeper together.

We’d separate when we came to a cross in the road, so to speak.

It was safer to travel in heartier groups, though the men who made our teams were competent enough.

Most, if not all, of my team were trained by Saverio.

The men in Romeo’s team were trained by Guido.

My uncle had a fierce look on his face. He was quiet, and I wondered if it had to do with his hair again. He was truly fucking struggling with the silver hair. I wasn’t sure if he was connecting the end of his youth to it or what. He was angrier than usual.

Romeo was always the uncle cracking jokes or getting a laugh or a slap because of his obsession with his hair. Over the years, it had become a thing for him.

That same thing seemed to be driving him mad.

Romeo oversaw dealing with Moro. Even though the pirate was seedy and deserved it, the plan was not to kill Moro. Romeo had killed him. Pinned Moro to his ship with a sword through his heart. I’d said nothing as we’d left.

I felt eyes on me from each side.

Romeo and Juliette had five sons. Angelo, Michele, Giacomo, Dante, and Piero.

Angelo was around my sister’s age. Michele was around Matteo’s age.

Giacomo and I were close in age. Same went for Marciano and Maestro and Dante and Piero.

I was close to all my cugini, but I was closest to Angelo and Michele from Romeo’s crew.

Angelo was with us during the recon mission for Stella, and when his old man kept a straight face, his jaw tight, Angelo raised his eyebrows at me.

I didn’t respond, but when we stopped for a minute to regroup, I decided it was time to try to put my uncle’s life into perspective. I nudged him, and he turned his stoney eyes on me.

“Question,” I said to him in Italian.

It took him a moment to give me a stiff nod.

“Do you regret any part of your life, uncle?”

The question took him by surprise. Just like the question about Sistine’s hair took her off guard. To his credit, though, even though we were in a battle situation, he seemed to be considering it.

“Yes,” he said. “The time I did not spend with my wife before we met.”

I was expecting him to say no, because he loved his wife and the life they’d built.

My uncle had been the same as me as a younger man.

His name said it all. Romeo. And he had been fulfilling the name’s prophecy, until his Juliette had stopped him in his tracks in a bar in Ireland.

But what he’d done was point me in another direction instead of the one I’d planned on going in.

I had planned on connecting the silver in his hair to scars life brings. Every battle was worth it.

Instead, he’d pointed me to the root of his problem, metaphorically and literally. He regretted the time he didn’t spend with his wife when he’d been galivanting all over the world, romancing women. And it wasn’t as if my uncle was old when he married.

“ Huh ,” I said, considering this. “So, your issue, uncle, is not with time flying, but the time spent apart from your wife before you met.”

“Time is not something that can be changed. It is stronger than anything in this world. Even a Fausti. There is no cure. When moments from the past become moments we cannot change, the devil does not even know that kind of anger and misery. A hell that not even he could design. You will see.”

You will see. Because he was taking note and acknowledging that something was moving between Sistine and I. Something he recognized, just like my father had. And he knew that the time I’d spent refusing the idea of one love would come back to haunt me.

Maybe one day when I stood where he was, my hair turning silver, a mark of time.

Time.

That powerful thing that couldn’t be changed. A second passes and there’s no repeat of it. No getting it back. A breath gone. Since life is made up of them.

A second could change life to death.

My uncle squeezed my shoulder. I’d been so focused on his admission that it took me a minute to meet his eyes.

He gave me another nod, this one the opposite of the first. I could feel something had been relieved inside of him.

The tension he’d been emitting had lightened.

Even though I couldn’t feel like Mamma or Mia, I could still feel changes in the atmosphere around me.

Maybe Zio Romeo admitting his issue out loud had freed him some.

My uncle lifted his arm and checked the time on his watch.

He gave Angelo and I the signal to break off in different directions.

We each had a head soldier with us. Vincenzo’s son, Remo, was with me.

These soldiers had a job, and their main job was to protect the sons and grandsons of the current king, my grandfather.

Our main job was to follow protocol so we didn’t fuck anything up.

Remo and I directed the men to the area we were assigned to search. We’d been instructed to check every nook and cranny. Some of the men even pressed on the walls to make sure no proxies had been put into place to trick the eye.

We found no trace of Stella.

My old man came to check out the situation on my end when his search came up empty.

No doubt his words and intentions were true.

He was checking on the situation, but I also knew the situation had to do with me as well.

Brando Fausti was keeping tabs on his sons.

After he was finished with me, he headed to find Marciano.

It seemed like only seconds had passed when my old man passed by in a blur on his way from checking on Marciano. Mac, Saverio’s father, with him. My old man made a motion for me to follow. I made a motion back that we would. Remo would round up the men up and we’d be right behind them.

Maybe one of our crews had found Stella. I hoped it would be Matteo who found her. He’d fought through hell to get to this point. They both deserved to see each other first.

If she was in the underground club. There were thousands of places the Nemours and the Russians could’ve taken her.

No one had briefed us in a while. I checked my watch.

There was no way time hadn’t moved forward much since the last time I’d checked it.

Saverio gave us the watches to communicate.

He said we couldn’t use our phones. He and his sister, Evelina, had designed the watches so nothing could interfere with them.

Something had. All my communications had been severed with the main team.

The main team was put together by Saverio and Evelina. She was the main point of contact off site. She had her own team at a place nearby. Evelina practically lived in her man’s ear when he wasn’t around. Her man’s name was Wolf, and he was an intense motherfucker. Just as intense as Mac.

Point still stood that we were on our own.

Even Remo couldn’t access his watch. We both agreed that we needed to keep up with my old man and Mac.

Chances were they would collect Romeo, his sons, and all their men at the meet up point.

It was safer for all of us to leave at once.

Safety in numbers. But if Romeo or any of his sons hadn’t noticed time had frozen on their watches, we were going to be late to the rendezvous point.

My old man and Mac shouldn’t have to come back for us.

After Remo gave the men instructions and explained that our communications had been severed, we became even more vigilant as we followed the path my old man and Mac had taken.

Every noise, even the squeak or scuttle of a rat or mouse, had us all turning our heads in the direction it had come from.

We wore night-vision googles. The halls were pitch black.

So were our fatigues. It was so cold, when a heavy breath would leave my mouth, the air would purl in a silver mist.